hat may seem like an odd statement, but it’s true. But 60% of your business information are stored on laptops, desktops, and mobile devices, and no where else! You’re backing up your server, that’s great, but what is happening to the rest of your potentially business critical data? If your computer crashes (hard drives do fail), get a virus, or get lost, all of that information could be lost. Most people don’t manually copy data to your server and perhaps you don’t want to copy your photos, videos, etc. to the company server…but if its not there, its gone. In fact, we believe if you don’t have your data in at least three places, it doesn’t exist: your everyday copy, a local backup, and an offsite backup.

What if I copy my files to a Thumb Drive or USB Stick?

Using a thumb drive to copy important files to is better than nothing, however know the risks. Thumb drives are frequently lost or damaged. Do you remember where your first thumb drive is? Typically it only will have one copy of a file and not multiple versions. Backup systems that provide versioning can provide a way to get data back that the most recent backup was corrupt. If you just copy over your existing data with bad data, your data is gone.

We received a call by a local business a few weeks ago. They aren’t a client, but were infected by the Cryptolocker Virus (read here for more info on that). The virus corrupted all of their local files as well as the files on the server. In their case, their backup wasn’t working properly so they had to go back a year to recover data. Needless to say, losing a year’s worth of work was quite painful.

Be mindful of where your data lies, how you protect it from data loss and give us a call for assistance on ensuring your critical data is protected.